"You can either start allowing open discussion within
the Wikipedia namespace, allow writers to rework or
totally repudiate their earlier work, and deal with me
as a surly collaborator, or you can deal with my
effort from outside your so-called community for a
long, long time. And it appears you have the hard part
of the bargain, because all I have to do is watch and
decide if I will make quality contributions that
advance human understanding or if I will battle this
collectivity to my last breath because I have found it
to be a dangerous authoritarian cult. + +If you
don't like being pushed around and feel you have the
moral high ground, I know how you feel. Because I am
absolutely confident of my stern approach, am
completely fatigued of a mealy mouthed lies from
educators who are trying to make knowledge a trade
secret, and I have little to loose and everything to
gain by fighting with all of my might wherever the
battle might present."
So what is Jimbo's response to this little edict? Another "all you need is love" approach?
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Ec wrote:
>I can support something like the three revert concept
>as a guideline, but certainly not as a rule, and even
>less as an enforceable rule.
Last time I checked the 3-revert rule had well over 80% support from a
wide-ranging and large group of Wikipedians. That makes it a policy here in
wikiland.
What there is, is a good deal of disagreement on how to enforce this policy.
Martin's idea for protecting the version a 3-revert-rule-breaking edit warrior
does not like seems to be a reasonable extension of our current protection
guidelines (and are now a part of those guidelines thanks to Jimbo's support
for the idea).
I would like to add a three-strike policy on top of that: if a user breaks the
3-revert rule 3 times or more in a certain time-frame, then that user gets a 24
hour time out (which could get longer for repeatedly striking out until a
certain number is reached - then it is off the arbitration committee).
Sadly, we are not a small little community anymore where informal means of
running the shop could do just fine. We need clear rules and clear ways to
enforce those rules.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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So, are we going to do something about edit wars or not? What exactly is
page protection going to accomplish if an individual like Wik will engage
in an edit war on virtually every page they are involved in? Or per-
article bans? Are we going to ban Wik from dozens of articles? Run after
him wherever he goes?
I note on the arbitration for Wik that the consensus among the committee
is leaning towards not handling the case of Wik directly because a 24 hour
ban policy is *under discussion*. Well, that policy has been sabotaged
for nonsensical reasons which could easily have been addressed by flexible
language in the policy itself.
If people like Wik can engage in edit wars without serious consequences,
and I on the other hand am attacked for doing what I can to intervene (as
in the case of [[McFly]], where I protected the page which Wik had blanked
repeatedly and - gasp - edited it afterwards), then it is clear that the
Wikipedia community as a whole *wants* edit wars to happen.
Well, if you want edit wars to happen, you sure as hell are going to get
edit wars. And don't expect me to hold back if someone like Wik gets into
a conflict with me.
If I sound angry, that's because I am. The bullies are being protected
with fallacious arguments of free speech and "WikiLove". We need
enforcement here. And I'm very disappointed in Jimbo for not doing
something about this issue and endlessly delaying any meaningful decision.
The solution is trivial. Warn and then temporarily ban people who violate
the *spirt and the letter* of the rule. There are *no* negative side-
effects of such a policy.
Erik
Angela wrote:
>The necessity to go through the additional stage of
>voting on acceptance of cases seems a waste of time if
>the mediators have already decided that arbitration is
>the best route for the person they are referring. I'm
>not saying they can't veto the referral if they really
>think that's best, but couldn't the default be
>acceptance of cases we refer to them rather than the
>insistence of a vote every time?
We need a way to stem the flood - we are *not* supermen that have no lives
outside of arbitration. These cases take a good deal of time so we need a way
to help regulate the process and also weed out items that are no longer
pressing, or could be handled in lower steps. If needed, we could eventually
recruit more arbitrators in order to better distribute the work load.
But being hasty will only result in the AC becoming a rubber stamping body for
bans. I also fear that mobs of users could start ganging up on merely unpopular
users. It would be fairly easy to game the system in that case - the mob would
make unreasonable demands to push the issue through the process (got hemlock?).
We need a check on that as well.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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We get to directly choose procedures and institutions, not outcomes.
That's very important to understand. Outcomes are driven by
procedures and institutions and sometimes in ways that are unexpected.
I think that we have consensus about the kinds of outcomes that we
want. We want procedures and institutions that are encouraging of
good behaviors and discouraging of bad behaviors. We want procedures
and institutions that prevent the rise of an ideological faction to
control the content of the articles in any political/ideological way.
We want procedures and institutions that are transparent, open,
flexible, reasonable, and which have a minimum of gamesmanship. We
want procedures and institutions that are scalable and that don't
depend on me as a bottleneck.
The trick is in figuring out what those institutions and procedures
should be. This will be a trial and error process.
I think that arbitration is working, but agree with those who point
out that it isn't what many of us envisioned as arbitration. It's
more of an independent judiciary panel deciding punishments on a
case-by-case basis.
I think that mediation has mixed success, but not because of the
intentions or the people involved, but because we've made something of
a structural error. Too many people aren't taking mediation
seriously, preferring to go straight to arbitration. The fact that
mediators can't really do anything other than talk sweetly is probably
the main issue.
I'm putting a lot of thought into these issues, and listening very
carefully and seriously to what everyone is saying. I expect that we
will be tweaking the system to a degree to try to alleviate some of
the problems we've seen.
--Jimbo
Just a thought I had yesterday, & it still seems attractive to me
today, but I don't know if this solves the problems we currently
have with Wikipedia -- or any problems. (And if it seems acceptible,
I would want it adopted only after it passed a poll, made known to
all Wikipedians.)
We allow sysops to ban users with accounts for 24 hours, subject
to the following procedure:
1. Immediately following the banning, notice of the ban is entered
on a page, say, [[Persons Banned for 24 hours]].
2. Within the next 48 hours a certain number of other sysops (say
3 or 5), must add their votes approving this ban.
Failure of both of these acts (or one sysop voting _against_ the
ban) then forces this act to be immediately reviewed by a committee
(say the Arbitration Committee), who may then remove sysop powers
from the person making the ban, reprimand her/him, or decline to
act.
The point of this procedure is to allow sysops to ban people they
believe are disruptive to Wikipedia _if the sysop is willing to
risk her/his reputation_. Hopefully, this will allow sysops to deal
with contributors who are disruptive or causing trouble, while
checking abuse with the possibility of a severe penalty.
Any thoughts? I'll assume if no one comments that this proposal
doesn't answer any pressing need on Wikipedia.
Geoff
Please look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quickpolls
It is a proposed polling system for backing up sysop and developer
decisions in cases like 24 hour bans or emergency desysoppings. Not a
voting system per se but more a way to confirm that the community is
behind a certain action before it is taken. 80% approval is needed for any
quickpoll.
There's a poll on the talk page (of course!) on whether we want to use
this scheme, and what could be done to improve it.
In light of this, please also reconsider your vote on the 24 hour policy.
Contrary to Martin's spamming policy, I'm also putting a notice on the
talk pages of those who voted against that policy (that seems to be the
best way to deal with votes where the options have changed).
Regards,
Erik
Erik asked:
> What exactly is page protection going to accomplish [...] ?
Slight correction: protection on the version that problem user X doesn't like. It's going to
accomplish the important task of annoying people who engage in excessive reversions,
and pleasing people who don't engage in excessive reversions. I believe that these are
called a "stick" and "carrot", respectively.
> [the 24hr ban] policy has been sabotaged for nonsensical reasons
If by "sabotage" you mean that I and eleven other people have voted against a policy
that you support, and by "nonsensical reasons" you mean "reasons that Erik disagrees
with", then I should remind you that disagreeing with your good self is not yet a crime.
We can discuss matters civilly, or we can start accusing each other of sabotage.
Experience suggests that the former tends to be more productive over the long term.
> If people like Wik can engage in edit wars without serious consequences,
> and I on the other hand am attacked for doing what I can to intervene [...], then it
> is clear that the Wikipedia community as a whole *wants* edit wars to happen.
Well, let's see. You do something people don't like, and you get complaints. Wik does
something people don't like, and Wik gets complaints. I'm not sure how you finesse that
into a community desire for edit wars. Especially given that the overwhelming majority
of the community have expressed their dislike of edit wars, just as you have.
If you don't like complaints, I humbly suggest that you don't do things that cause people
to complain. Those people who complain about certain of your actions are most likely
doing so because they do not like certain of your actions, logically enough.
> I protected the page which Wik had blanked repeatedly and - gasp - edited it
> afterwards
Yes, it seems you protected [[McFly]], and reverted it to the version that Wik didn't like.
If only there was some sort of suggested policy to allow for that! If there was such a
suggestion, it would probably have been suggested by some good-looking individual
such as myself, perhaps on [[wikipedia talk:revert]], and mentioned a few days ago on
this mailing list.
> If I sound angry, that's because I am.
If I sound like I have a headache and a cold, that's because I have. But that probably
doesn't come across so well over the internet.
Many people are annoyed at some of the problems Wikipedia currently has, and that's
perfectly understandable. If you must get angry, get angry with the problems, not with
the community as a whole. We all have the same goal here, we just differ as to the best
route to it.
-Martin
> at least consider the possibility of having an explicit bias for
> accepting cases referred by the Mediation Committee
We have precisely such a bias in our current [[wikipedia:arbitration
policy]], under "Jurisdiction". Does it need changing?
-Martin